Irish and foreign workers must stand firmly together

Workers have different interests to the bosses. It is in the workers' interests to have a more pleasant working environment, more money to spend on our families, and more leisure time to enjoy it all. We can't have all this while slaving to increase the bosses' profits. And workers of all nationalities, from the factory hands to the teachers, from street-cleaners to domestic workers have these basic interests in common.

Metro Eireann, a newspaper largely written by and aimed at
immigrants in Ireland, pubished the article (written by a WSM member)
below. It is distrbuted in Dublin at least, and maybe around the
country.

Solidarity is strength:
Irish and foreign workers must stand firmly together

The scandal concerning Gama, the Turkish construction company,which
paid its workers as little as a ¤2.20 per hour, showed a
nationwide audience just how vulnerable immigrant workers are. The
current policy whereby work permits are issued to employers rather
than workers ensures that the employer has a stick to beat any worker
who stands up for her rights.

New legislation on the work permit system is still to be debated
in the Dailm and until this new system is put into practice, it
remains unclear if it will significantly reduce exploitation.

However, exploitation is not confined to non-EU workers on
permits. With large numbers of Poles, Lithuanians and other workers
from the former Soviet bloc coming here, there is the prospect of a
"race to the bottom" as employers force workers into competion with
each other.

Despite the occasional nationalist rhetoric of Irish bosses they
are much more comfortable with their foreign counterparts than with
the local bus driver who's a bit too enthusiastic about the trade
union.

Bosses, be they Irish and foreign, have common interests. It is in
a bosses'interest that workers work harder, longer, for less pay and
less benefits. This is because they will increase their profits.

Capitalists know this. It is why they have associations such as
IBEC and allies like Fianna Fail and the Labour Party. It is why you
will have Turkish bosses xploiting both Turkish and Irish workers and
Irish bosses exploiting both Turkish and Irish workers.

Workers have different interests to the bosses. It is in the
workers' interests to have a more pleasant working environment, more
money to spend on our families, and more leisure time to enjoy it
all. We can't have all this while slaving to increase the bosses'
profits. And workers of all nationalities, from the factory hands to
the teachers, from street-cleaners to domestic workers have these
basic interests in common.

So there is a natural opposition between bosses and workers.

When it suits them, bosses can be quite international. They'll
employ any nationality as long as they can squeeze more profit out of
them. But they can also play one nationality off another. Politicians
will use immigrants as an excuse why there isn't enough money to
adequately fund the health services or why dearly won working
conditions are threatened.

It is important, and in our interest, that Irish working people
see through this propaganda. It is in our own interest because if we
allow bosses to play, for example, the Poles against Irish on the
building sites then both sets of workers will find their working
conditions being reduced as they will effectively be undercutting
each other.

The obvious solution is for both sets of workers to come together,
to jointly demand decent working conditions. If they do so, it is
very hard to see what the bosses can do. You won't find too many
Construction executives mixing mortar, laying blocks, and sticking
sewage pipes together.They are utterly dependent on the workers.

If the workers' demands aren't met, and their labour withdrawn,
the bosses' profits will disappear. Of course it's never easy to
organise a militant campaign, and serious preparation would have to
be done to give it a fair chance of success.

But the point is that nothing is being done at the moment. Indeed
Ray Halpin, a SIPTU official, was on national radio (the Matt Cooper
show) at the end of August lamenting the fact that due to the
strength of the employers nothing could be done about the competion
between Irish and immigrant labour on the building sites. He's wrong,
as the history of the labour movement, including his own trade union,
shows.

A start can be made by:

a) Recruiting members to unions

b) Encouraging activity in the unions.

c) The officials of the unions need to stop thinking they are in
another NGO where taking subscriptions and producing policy documents
are enough. If they are unwilling to facilitate direct action by
members they should step aside and get a job with Oxfam.

d) Organising a militant, self-managed campaign with concrete
goals, which includes the willingness to strike. This can unite
workers from every country, not just because they'll feel an
outpouring of brotherly love, but because it is in their interests to
unite.

The old trade union slogan is as relevant as ever: Agitate,
Educate,Organise!

This is an elementary approach to improving our daily lives. It's
what got us our basic freedoms and perks, such as the eight hour day,
holidays, sick pay and social insurance a few decades ago.

But more is possible. The labour, both manual and intellectual, of
working people is the what makes all that is valuable in the world.
And so there isn't any decent reason why a parasitical employer
should cream off hundreds of millions while the workers around the
world are left with crumbs.

Thanks to the centuries of endeavour of our ancestors, of all
countries, we are born into a society with electricity, transport,
science, and a fascinating variety of cultures. Modern society is
advanced enough so that all can live quality lives to one's taste.

It is disgusting that a tiny minority, such as Ireland's Michael
O'Leary and America's Donald Rumsfeld, get to swagger around in
mansions, and actively prevent the achievement of a fair society, not
least by forcing explotiative working conditions - he gets millions,
workers get peanuts - or, as in Iraq, by savagely destroying people's
homes in order to rob their natural resources.

As well as winning small gains in the present, workers need to
develop a vision of a future society where there isn't any
exploitation at all.

Given technological development, it is possible for everybody on
the planet to have a high standard of living.

With the intelligence and good will that most of us see in our
friends and family, it is possible to organise society so that
everybody can have an input into decisions that affect them. In other
words, meaningful democracy in the workplace and the neighbourhood.
This means organising without any bosses making decisions over our
heads. Once bosses get a foothold, they accumulate power and develop
different interests from the rest of the population.

Sections of the workers' movement, particularly the anarchists,
have articulated this vision of self-management over the decades. For
those interested in pursing these ideas, it is a tradition well worth
exploring…

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In the last fifteen to twenty years, two new phenomena have finally reached Ireland –Immigration and alongside it - Racism. This is not to say that we Irish never had our prejudices before the ‘blacks’ arrived, back then we were quite happy directing our bigotry and ignorance towards travellers, gays, Jews and Protestants.

There is a growing crisis in Ireland with the hospitalisation of around 8 of the 41 Afghan Hunger strikers who occupied St Patricks Cathedral on Sunday last. WSM members have been taking part in solidarity vigils and other support work for the 41 Afghan hunger strikers . We support their demand to be allowed to stay in Ireland and we will be taking part in demonstrations and other events over the new few days in support of that demand.

The exploitation of migrant workers who are often paid illegally low wages has hit the Irish news many times in recent months. Labour party leader Pat Rabbitte reacted to this explotation by suggesting further controls should be place on migrant workers!

Two people were arrested in Dublin on Tuesday as Residents against Racism activists attempted to block the deportation of 39 people (including fourteen children, 5 of whom were born in Ireland) to Lagos. Nigeria. This account is from Emma a WSM member and RAR activist who was arrested.

In the early hours of May 19th Michael Alabi was deported by the Irish State. Michael was resident of a hostel in Lower Gardiner street and was part of a group of Nigerian men who decided to go on hunger strike to protest against the department of Justice's draconian immigration policies.

The Dublin City North Branch of the INTO has passed a motion endorsing the call by outgoing union president, Austin Corcoran, that all schools become safe places for all children -to be given the status of embassies. It is hoped that more branches within the union will take up this issue and that by next year's annual congress a campaign will be launched in the union to make this a reality

The Irish government is currently trying to deport women and children under the threat of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which frequently results in death. Asylum in Ireland can be sought on grounds of religious or political persecution. However the government refuse to acknowlege FGM as a political act and therefore women and children cannot apply for asylum on the basis they have suffered or will suffer FGM if deported.

Over the last couple of days we have witnessed massive media hysteria about the case of Maria, a young girl supposedly abducted by a Roma couple in Greece. DNA tests and Lombroso-style racial profiling have come into action in a case that has stirred the irrational anxiety that feeds racism and bigotry. Beyond the fact that child abduction is a serious issue, the "whiteness" and "blondeness" of the alleged victim have been emphasised together with the "Roma" condition of the alleged culprits. Let us remember that this is taking place in Greece, a country where blatant racism (as expressed by Golden Dawn) is on the rise, so there are good reasons to be cautious about this whole case.

In Ireland institutional racism has evolved to come fitted as standard. At the same time the State dithers about making the decision on whether or not to grant Travellers ethnic status. As the Stephen Lawrence family lawyer, Imran Khan stated – when you write laws of the land specifically for a people – it is a sure sign that you recognise them as a specific group when you bring in laws that pertain only to them. So, in Ireland, are Travellers specifically targeted in the Anti-Trespass Act brought in 2002 and Section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act (1994).

Dale Farm is a halting site which is also the largest concentration of Irish Travellers in Britain, being home to over 1000 people (about 100 families), many of whom are said to have their cultural roots in Rathkeale in Limerick. It was started in the 1960s when a number of families bought the former scrapyard site and Basildon council granted planning permission for 40 houses. This happened in the context of broad progress in race relations and a brief breeze of relative official tolerance for Travellers, epitomised in the liberal-sponsored 1968 Caravan Sites Act. Basildon Council have put aside an £18 million budget to bulldoze the site and forcefully evict the families (a staggering figure when you consider that in 2010 the total UK budget for providing Travellers with halting facilities was less than 30 million).
[Français]

The cracks beneath the surface in the peace process were once again exposed on the streets of East Belfast last night in the second night of serious sectarian rioting. A UVF led mob numbering in the 100's has been engaged in attacks on catholic homes at the edge of the Short Strand. This is the reality of a peace dividend which has failed to deliver to working-class communities and stands in stark contrast to suburbia only 5 miles away which produced golf champion Rory McElroy.